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Educational Research and Reviews Vol. 1 (4), pp. 134-139, July 2006Available online at http:// www.academicjournals.org/ERRISSN 1990-3839 © 2006 Academic Journals

Review

How does working memory work in the classroom?

Tracy Packiam Alloway

University of Durham, Susan E. Gathercole, University of York. Email: [email protected], Tel: 0191 3348330.

Accepted 6 July, 2006

Working memory plays a key role in supporting children’s learning over the school years, and beyondthis into adulthood. It is proposed here that working memory is crucially required to store informationwhile other material is being mentally manipulated during the classroom learning activities that formthe foundations for the acquisition of complex skills and knowledge. A child with a poor workingmemory capacity will struggle and often fail in such activities, disrupting and delaying learning. The aimof this review is to present the case that working memory makes a vital contribution to classroomlearning. Following a brief introduction to working memory and its assessment, links between workingmemory skills and scholastic progress is reviewed and illustrated. Next, the classroom behaviour ofchildren with very poor working memory functions, and in particular their characteristic failures inlearning activities, is described. Finally, the implications of this research for classroom practice isconsidered; this includes an intervention programme designed to improve learning outcomes forchildren with poor working memory function that is based on the theoretical analysis of workingmemory and learning advanced here.

Key words: memory, learning, reading, mathematics, general learning difficulties.

INTRODUCTION

Working memory

Working memory is the term used to refer to a systemresponsible for temporarily storing and manipulatinginformation. It functions as a mental workspace that canbe flexibly used to support everyday cognitive activitiesthat require both processing and storage such as, mentalarithmetic. However, the capacity of working memory islimited, and the imposition of either excess storage orprocessing demands in the course of an on-going

cognitive activity will lead to catastrophic loss ofinformation from this temporary memory system.

A good example of an everyday activity that usesworking memory is mental arithmetic. Imagine, forexample, attempting to multiply two numbers (e.g., 43,27) spoken to you by another person, without being ableto use a pen and paper or a calculator. First of all, you

Contact information: School of Education, University ofDurham, Leazes Road, Durham, DH1 1TA, Email:[email protected], Tel: 0191 3348330.

would need to hold the two numbers in working memoryThe next step would be to use learned multiplication rulesto calculate the products of successive pairs of numbersadding to working memory the new products as youproceed. Finally, you would need to add the productsheld in working memory, resulting in the correct solutionTo do this successfully, it is necessary to store the twonumbers, and then systematically apply multiplication

rules, storing the intermediate products that aregenerated as we proceed through the stages of thecalculation. Without working memory, we would not beable to carry out this kind of complex mental activity inwhich we have to both keep in mind some informationwhile processing other materials. Carrying out suchmental activities is a process that is effortful and error-prone. A minor distraction such as an unrelated thoughtspringing to mind or an interruption by someone else islikely to result in complete loss of the stored informationand so in a failed calculation attempt. As no amount ofeffort will allow us to remember again the lost information



the only course of action is to start the calculation afresh.Our abilities to carry out such calculations are limited bythe amount of information we have to store and process.Multiplying larger numbers (e.g., 142 and 891) “in ourheads” is for most of us out of the question, even thoughit does not require greater mathematical knowledge than

the earlier example. The reason we cannot do this is thatthe storage demands of the activity exceed the capacityof working memory.

In an experimental setting, an individual’s workingmemory capacity is reliably assessed by tasks in whichthe individual is required to process and store increasingamounts of information until the point at which recallerrors are made. An example of such a task is readingspan, in which the participant makes judgments about thesemantic properties of sentences while remembering thelast word of each sentence in sequence (Daneman andCarpenter, 1980). Tasks of short-term memory, incontrast, place menial demands on processing and areoften described as storage-only tasks. Verbal short-termmemory is traditionally assessed using tasks that requirethe participant to recall a sequence of verbal information,such as digit span and word span (Baddeley et al., 1998).Visuo-spatial short-term memory tasks usually involvedthe retention of either spatial or visual information. Forexample, in the Visual Patterns Test, the participant ispresented with a matrix of black and white squares andhas to recall which squares were filled in (Della Sala etal., 1997). The Corsi blocks task is an example of aspatial memory task, and participants have to recall thesequence of blocks that are tapped (Milner, 1971).

Performance on working memory tasks is subject tolarge degrees of individual variation. This is illustrated in

Figure 1, which presents data from the listening recalltest on the Automated Working Memory Assessment(AWMA) (Alloway et al., 2004). The standardisationsample consisted of 709 children attending state primaryschools in the North-East of England, aged between 4and 11 years (Alloway et al., in press). Z -scores werecalculated using the trials correct measure of each testfrom all participating children; a score of 0 representsaverage performance on that measure across the entireage range. There was a steady developmentalimprovement in performance between 4 and 11 years.Comparable data collected for the Working Memory TestBattery for Children (Pickering and Gathercole, 2001)

established that the linear increase in performancecontinues to about 12 years, with performance levellingoff towards 15 years (Gathercole et al., 2004). Equallynotable was the substantial degree of variability at eachage, as reflected in the distance between the 10

thand

90th

centile bars for each measure. At 6.5 years, forexample, the 10

thcentile is close to the mean for the 4.5

year old sample, and the 90th

centile approximates to themean performance level for 9.5 year old children. Thus,within an average class of 30 children, we would expectto see working memory capacity differences correspond-

Alloway 135

ing to 5 years of normal development between the threehighest and three lowest scoring individuals.

Individual differences in the capacity of workingmemory appear to have important consequences fochildren’s ability to acquire knowledge and new skills. Wereview a number of studies in which working memory

skills impact learning throughout the school years.

Working memory and reading

Reading disabilities can be characterized by markeddifficulties in mastering skills including word recognitionspelling, and reading comprehension. Current evidencesuggests that although verbal short-term memory issignificantly associated with reading achievements ovethe early years of reading instruction, its role is as part oa general phonological processing construct related toreading development rather than representing a causafactor per se (Wagner et al., 1997; Wagner and Muse, inpress). In a five-year longitudinal study of severahundred children who were followed from kindergartenthrough fourth grade, multiple measures of phonologicaawareness, verbal short-term memory, and rapid namingwere administered (Wagner et al., 1997). A key findingwas that at three different time periods, phonologicaawareness skills predicted individual differences in word-level reading, while verbal short-term memory skills didnot. While studies such as these and others (Wagner etal., 1993; Wagner et al., 1994; Wagner et al., 1999) havefound a high correlation between phonological awarenessand short-term memory. Why is it that only phonologicaawareness ability predicts early reading skills? One

explanation is that although the memory demands ophonological awareness tasks are similar to those overbal memory tasks, letter knowledge and other aspectsof lexical information play an important role in theperformance of phonological awareness tasks (seeWagner and Muse, in press, for further discussion)Indeed, phonological short-term memory tasks that drawon lexical knowledge, such as nonword repetition, have asimilarly close relationship to vocabulary acquisition(Gathercole and Baddeley, 1989; Gathercole et al., 1992Hu, 2003; Swanson et al., 2004).

With respect to verbal working memory tasks, it is welestablished that children with reading disabilities show

significant and marked decrements on such tasks relativeto typically developing individuals (Siegel and Ryan1989; Swanson, 1994, 1999; Swanson et al., 1996). Intypically developing samples of children, scores onworking memory tasks predict reading achievemenindependently of measures of verbal short-term memory(Swanson and Howell, 2001; Swanson, 2003) andphonological awareness skills (Swanson and BeebeFrankenberger, 2004). This dissociation in performancehas been explained as the result of limited capacity fosimultaneous processing and storage of information cha-



136 Educ. Res. Rev.

racteristic of working memory tasks, rather than aprocessing deficiency or specific problem with verbalshort-term memory in poor readers (De Jong, 1998). It isimportant to note that studies have found that workingmemory skills of children with reading disabilities do notimprove over time, indicating that a sustained deficit,

rather than a developmental lag, best explains theirmemory impairment (Swanson and Sachse-Lee, 2001).

Working memory and mathematics

Associations between working memory and mathematicalskills vary as a function of sample age as well asmathematical task. The age disparity in the contributionof working memory to mathematical skills is mostpronounced with respect to verbal working memory tasks.For example, Bull and Scerif (2001) found a relationshipbetween memory and math in 7-year olds (Gathercoleand Pickering, 2000), but this association was no longer

significant in an adolescent population (Reuhkala, 2001).One possibility is that verbal working memory plays acrucial role in mathematical performance when childrenare younger. However, as they get older, other factorssuch as number knowledge and strategies play a greaterrole (Thevenot and Oakhill, 2005). This view is supportedby recent evidence that working memory is a reliableindicator of mathematical disabilities in the first year offormal schooling (Gersten et al., 2005).

There is growing evidence that mathematical deficitscould result from poor working memory abilities. Forexample, low working memory scores have been found tobe closely related to poor computational skills (Wilson

and Swanson, 2001), and reliably differentiate childrenwith mathematical deficits from same-age controls (Gearyet al., 1999; Bull and Scerif, 2001). Weak verbal workingmemory skills are also characteristic of poor performanceon arithmetic word problems (Swanson and Sachse-Lee,2001). Common failures include impaired recall on bothword and number-based working memory stimuli andincreased intrusion errors (Passolunghi and Siegel,2001). As with reading deficits, mathematical abilities donot improve substantially during the course of schooling,suggesting that such deficits are persistent and cannot bemade up over time (Geary, 1993).

Visuo-spatial memory is also closely linked withmathematical skills. It has been suggested that visuo-

spatial memory functions as a mental blackboard,supporting number representation, such as place valueand alignment in columns, in counting and arithmetic(Geary, 1990; McLean and Hitch, 1999; D’Amico andGharnera, 2005). Children with poor visuo-spatialmemory skills have less room in their blackboard to keepin mind the relevant numerical information (Heathcote,1994).

Specific associations have been found between visuo-spatial memory and encoding in visually presentedproblems (Logie et al., 1994), and in multi-digit operations

(Heathcote, 1994). Visuo-spatial memory skills alsouniquely predict variability in performance in nonverbaproblems (operands presented with blocks) in pre-schoochildren (Rasmussen and Bisanz, 2005). In contrast, therole of verbal short-term memory is restricted totemporary number storage during mental calculation

(Furst and Hitch, 2000; Hechet, 2002), rather thangeneral mathematical skills (McLean and Hitch, 1999Reuhkala, 2001).

Working memory and general learning difficulties

Many children recognised by their school as havinglearning difficulties in the areas of reading andmathematics have marked impairments of workingmemory (Siegel and Ryan, 1989; Swanson, 1994Swanson et al., 1996; De Jong,1998; Mayringer andWimmer, 2000; Bull and Scerif, 2001). There have beenseveral studies investigating possible contributions o

working memory abilities to learning problems in theclassroom and whether these abilities differ as a functionof severity of learning deficits.

In the UK, the Special Educational Needs Code ofPractice is a guide for education settings such asnurseries and playgroups, state schools and locaeducation authorities outlining how they should identifyassess and provide help for children with speciaeducational needs (DfES, 2002). According to this guideany pupil who requires extra support to succeed in aregular classroom is a child who has special educationneeds. The term ‘special educational needs’ reflects abroad spectrum of problems, including physical o

sensory difficulties, emotional and behavioural difficultiesor difficulties with speech. As many children at somepoint during their school years have special educationaneeds, it is important to identify the cognitivemechanisms that underlie these learning difficulties.

Alloway et al. (2005) found that children with speciaeducational needs had working memory deficits thavaried in severity according to stage of the Code oPractice for special educational needs. In particularchildren with statements of special educational needsperformed at significantly lower levels than children at theSchool Action stage on such tasks. The magnitude oworking memory deficits of the special needs childrenwere never observed in a sample of over 600 children

without learning difficulties. Further evidence that deficitsin working memory appear to be unique to learningdifficulties is provided by Pickering and Gathercole(2004). They found that children identified as havinggeneral learning difficulties that included both literacy andmathematics performed poorly in all areas of workingmemory, whereas children with problems of abehavioural or emotional nature performed normally onall of the memory assessments.

A key question regarding the relationship betweenworking memory and learning disabilities is whether wor-



king memory is simply a proxy for IQ. There is someevidence that although working memory is dissociablefrom general abilities (Siegel, 1998; Nation and Bryant,2004), it may still explain individual differences in memoryand scholastic attainment (Stothard and Hulme, 1992;Nation et al., 1999). However, recent research has

confirmed that the specificity of associations betweenworking memory and attainment persist after differencesin IQ have been statistically controlled in children withlearning difficulties (Swanson and Saez, 2003;Gathercole et al., 2006). Further evidence that verbalworking memory taps more than general ability isprovided by reports of differences in working memoryscores in children with reading comprehension problemsand other learning disabilities even after verbal IQ hasbeen accounted for (Siegel and Ryan,1989; Cain et al.,2004).

Working memory in the classroom

An important question to consider is whether suchmarked working memory deficits affect classroomactivities. A recent observation study of children withverbal working memory impairments can shed some lighton this issue (Gathercole et al., in press). Childrenidentified as having poor verbal working memory (i.e.,standard scores <85) but normal nonverbal IQ in theirfirst year of formal schooling were observed in theclassroom one year later. These children struggled withtasks involving simultaneous storage and processing ofinformation. Here is an example of such an activity(Gathercole and Alloway, 2004):

The children in Nathan’s class were asked to identifythe rhyming words in a text read aloud by the teacher.They had to wait until all four lines had been readbefore telling the teacher the two words that rhymed:tie , and fly . This task involves matching the soundstructures of a pair of words, and storing them.

Common failures for these children with workingmemory impairments included forgetting lengthyinstructions, place-keeping errors (e.g., missing outletters or words in a sentence), and failure to cope withsimultaneous processing and storage demands (seeGathercole and Alloway, 2005, for further discussion).

One explanation for these failures is that the concurrentstorage and processing demands of the activity werebeyond the working memory capacities of these children.Although in isolation, it seems likely the child would beable to meet these storage requirements withoutdifficulty. The added processing demands increased theworking memory demands and so led to memory failure.This view is supported by the fact that all the children withworking memory impairments were placed in the lowestability groups in the class. Although the classroomteachers viewed their main problems as relating to lack of

Alloway 137

attention and motivation (e.g., “He doesn’t listen to aword I say ”), it is important to note that the childrenshowed no consistent evidence of attentional deficitsusing the Conners’ Teacher Rating Scale (1997), adiagnostic test based on teacher ratings of behaviour.

Why does working memory constrain learning? One

suggestion is that working memory provides a resourcefor the individual to integrate knowledge from long-termmemory with information in temporary storage (Swan andSaez, 2003; Swenze and Frankenberger, 2004). A childwith weak working memory capacities is therefore limitedin their ability to perform this operation in importanclassroom-based activities. A related suggestion is thapoor working memory skills result in pervasive learningdifficulties because this system acts as a bottleneck folearning in many of the individual learning episodesrequired to increment the acquisition of knowledge(Gathercole, 2004). Because low working memorychildren often fail to meet working memory demands oindividual learning episodes, the incremental process oacquiring skill and knowledge over the school years isdisrupted.

Practical Applications

Frequent failures of low memory children to meet theworking memory demands of classroom activities may beat least one cause of the poor academic progress thatthey typically make. In order to reach expectedattainment targets, the child has to succeed in manydifferent structured learning activities designed to build upgradually across time the body of knowledge and skills

that they need in areas of the curriculum such as literacyand mathematics. If the children frequently fail inindividual learning situations simply because they cannostore and manipulate information in working memorytheir progress is acquiring complex knowledge and skillsin areas such as literacy and mathematics will be slowand difficult.

If this is the case, what can be done to ameliorate thelearning difficulties resulting from impairments of workingmemory? While the ideal solution would be to remediatethese memory impairments directly, there is littleevidence that training working memory in children withlow working memory skills leads to substantial gains inacademic attainments (Turley-Ames and Whitfield, 2003)

However, we suggest that the learning progress ochildren with poor working memory skills can beimproved dramatically by reducing working memorydemands in the classroom. As part of a large-scaleproject designed to identify and provide learning supporin the classroom for children with working memorydeficits, we recommend a number of ways to minimisevia effective classroom management the memory-relatedfailures in classroom-based learning activities frequentlyexperienced by children with working memoryimpairments.



138 Educ. Res. Rev.

First, it is important to ensure that the child canremember what he or she is doing. On many occasions,children with low working memory simply forget what theyhave to do next, leading to failure to complete manylearning activities. Children’s memory for instructions willbe improved by using the instructions that are as brief

and simple as possible. Instructions should be brokendown into individual steps where possible. One effectivestrategy for improving the child’s memory for the task isfrequent repetition of instructions. For tasks that takeplace over an extended period of time, reminding thechild of crucial information for that particular phase of thetask rather than repetition of the original instruction islikely to be most useful. Finally, one of the best ways toensure that the child has not forgotten crucial informationis to ask them to repeat it .Our observations indicate thatthe children themselves have good insight into theirworking memory failures.

Second, in activities that involve the child in processingand storage information, working memory demands andhence task failures will be reduced if the processingdemands are decreased. For example, sentence writingwas a source of particular difficulty for all of the childrenwith low working memory that we observed. Sentenceprocessing difficulty can be lessened by reducing thelinguistic complexity of the sentence. This can beachieved in a variety of ways, such as simplifying thevocabulary, and using common rather than more unusualwords. In addition, the syntax of the sentence can besimplified, by encouraging the child to use simplestructures such as active subject-verb-objectconstructions rather than sentences with a complexclausal structure. The sentences can also be reduced in

length. A child with poor working memory skills workingwith short sentences, relatively unfamiliar words and easysyntactic forms are much more likely to hold in workingmemory the sentence form and to succeed in areasonable attempt at writing the sentence.

Third, the problem of the child losing his or her place ina complex activity can be reduced by breaking down thetasks into separate steps, and by providing memorysupport. External memory aids such as useful spellingsdisplayed on the teacher’s board or the classroom wallsand number lines are widely used in classrooms. In ourobservational study, however, we found that children withpoor working memory function often chose not to use

such devices, but gravitated instead towards lower-levelstrategies with lower processing requirements resulting inreduced general efficiency. For example, instead of usingnumber aids such as Unifix blocks and number lines thatare designed to reduce processing demands, thesechildren relied on more error-prone strategies like simplecounting instead. In order to encourage children’s use ofmemory aids, it may be necessary to give the childregular periods of practice in the use of the aids in thecontext of simple activities with few working memorydemands.

Difficulties in keeping place in complex task structuremay also be eased by increasing access to usefuspellings. This will also help prevent them losing theiplaces in writing activities. Reducing the processing loadand opportunity for error in spelling individual words wilincrease the child’s success in completing the sentence

as a whole. However, reading of information fromspellings on key words on the teachers’ board was itselobserved to be a source of error in low memory childrenin our study, with children commonly losing their placewithin the word. Making available spellings of key wordson the child’s own desk rather than a distant class boardmay reduce these errors by making the task of locatingkey information easier and reducing opportunities fodistraction. It may also be beneficial to develop ways ofmarking the child’s place in word spellings as a means oreducing place-keeping errors during copying.

A final recommendation for improving the learningsuccesses of individuals with poor working memory skillsis to develop in the children effective strategies for copingwith situations in which they experience working memoryfailures. Strategies may include encouraging the child toask for forgotten information where necessary, training inthe use of memory aids, and encouragement to continuewith complex tasks rather than abandoning them even isome of the steps are not completed due to memoryfailure. Arming the child with such self-help strategies wilpromote their development as independent learners ableto identify and support their own learning needs.

Conclusions

Impairments of working memory are closely associatedwith learning deficits, as well as daily classroom activitiesWithout early intervention, memory deficits cannot bemade up over time and will continue to compromise achild’s likelihood of academic success. A classroom-based intervention designed to reduce memory-relatedfailures that lie at the root of substantial learningdifficulties is strongly recommended.

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